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If advertising and marketing are done though televisions, radios, and various print media by big businesses, then small business can use a different channel. It is difficult to compete with these enormous businesses since they have enough funds to keep these advertising channels. Ask a small business marketing consulting company about what you can do to help improve your current business situation.

It is all about making yourself present in the internet. As a small business, it is important to use all available channels to create a strong presence on the internet. These are more affordable methods of getting business leads, earning more, and it helps you build your relationship with customers. With so many applications small businesses can use on the internet, how would one know which ones are worth investing on? Here is a list of the top three things you need to have to step up your business.

Have your website optimized

Internet marketing is not just about having a website. There are many small business consulting services that can offer creating a website for you, optimized for your service or product. Your website can contain valuable information regarding your offered services, a short history, testimonials, and your contact details interested customers will need. This is where you can showcase all of your strengths and unique selling points.

You can either learn search engine optimization techniques or hire a professional company. Hiring a professional will ensure that your website will get all the necessary tweaks it needs. Once your website shows progress in the organic search results, you have more chances of getting new business leads. More traffic to your website will help your sales go up.

Get in touch with social media tools

Social media tools are rather popular today. They’re not popular for just any reason. Businesses are also using these as platforms to improve the business standing on the internet. Small business marketing consulting companies are aware of the impact these tools can give your business. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are a few social media platforms you can use. Good thing about them is they are totally free.

Having a Facebook account lets you connect to possible customers. With over 200 million Facebook users, you have the chance for social interaction to people you need to interact with. Twitter, on the other hand, grows 40% each month. YouTube can be a powerful business tool to show demonstrations and informational videos since it reaches a very large mass of the market. These media tools can help drive traffic to your main website. Small business marketing consulting companies should be able to give you proper guidelines and information to use these platforms properly.

Write your own blog

Drive more traffic into your website with a blog. Writing your own blogs gives your business credibility and authority. It shows that you are an expert on the subject. Blogs can help you gain the trust of your customers with the useful information you are writing into your blogs. Not only that, you get to do free PR.

Companies providing small business consulting services will help you achieve a successful internet marketing campaign. They can inform and teach you all the strategies that will improve and supplement each marketing strategy for an impressive presence on the internet. A small business like yours should not be left out. These internet marketing strategies will get you at the top, soon.

The debate continues on whether hiring a small business marketing consultant is a worthy investment, especially for small businesses who have limited resources to begin with. However, businesses of all sizes and from different industries can largely benefit from these professional services that make it worthy of looking into. You may be proficient at the specific area of business that you are offering your customers, but not all business owners are equipped with the marketing skills to ensure that they can get their marketing message to the intended audience.

The concept of marketing is deceivingly simple. There are several methods that you can use to market your products or services to your target customers. However, there are also several variables that can prevent the message from reaching its intended audience. Expert consultants will be able to identify what factors can lead to more success and what are not working efficiently. Generally speaking, a consulting agency can help you develop marketing strategies for small business. However, there are more benefits that await you.

The main reason why you should invest on professional consulting for your business is to bring in a new dimension of thinking. With an impartial view from a business marketing expert, you will be able to see the larger picture to devise more effective marketing solutions. The internal politics and management needs within a company can hinder one’s ability to devise an effective strategy. With an outside view, they can recommend marketing strategies for small business that is designed to meet your goals based on their experience and expertise.

Another practical benefit that you can enjoy with a consultant is the cost-efficiency. You only pay for services that you get. Also, you have control over the level of consulting services that they provide. You can therefore expect maximum efficiency and productivity with the number of hours that you pay them for consulting services. In fact, it is very practical since you can put your consultant on hold whenever business is slow and hire them again as needed.

You can also task your consultant to handle your entire marketing department. Any business owner is aware that there is a lot going on with running a business. Thus, marketing is often neglected or not done as efficiently as if you had someone who can look over marketing strategies for small business. With a business consultant, it is now possible because you can leverage their professional expertise to devise a marketing approach suited for various situations.

Ideally, you should hire a consultant when a situation comes up in your business organization that requires for a marketing job outside of the existing marketing duties in your business. These situations include any or a combination of the following: introducing new product, newly formed business, launching a product line, setting up new distribution channels, or troubleshooting business marketing schemes.

The above-mentioned benefits to hiring a small business marketing consultant is just a general glimpse into the services offered. The best feature about a consulting service is that it is highly flexible; thus, you can make use of this service regardless of the size, scope, and type of business you are in.

When it comes to running a successful business, marketing is essential. For a small business, marketing often seems like a daunting task – especially when it comes to marketing your business on the web.

Many times, budget-minded business owners fear that small business marketing needs to be expensive in order to be effective. Fortunately – this isn’t true. Here are five simple tips for small business owners who are looking to save dollars, while still running an effective online marketing campaign.

1. Optimize Your Website

There are three simple steps to take so that you can be sure that your website is working for you.

The first is to use a descriptive title for your site as well as keywords and a description that allows search engines and site visitors alike to know what they will find when they visit your web page. Once that’s taken care of, make sure that you are placing keywords appropriately in the text of your website.

Your keywords should be specific to your products and services, and should be chosen with consideration for the terms prospective customers would use when searching with Google or Yahoo or whichever other search engine they use.

Finally, these keywords should also be used in the alt image tags as they relate to the photos and illustrations that you post to your website.

2. Market Your Website with Articles & Distribute Press Releases

Article marketing is an extremely effective way to draw visitors to your website. By creating an informative short article that relates to your business, your area of expertise and your keywords, you can show readers a bit more of what they’ll find from your business – which you can link to in your resource box at the bottom of the article.

Online press releases are another effective marketing tool. Like conventional press releases that let local newswires pick up a story about a new staff member or a new product line, online press release distribution will allow you to get the word out to those who publish online newsletters or who review products and services like those that you offer.

Both articles and press releases published online create valuable, relevant inbound links to your website (via the link to your site in your resource box at the end of each article or press release). Search engines place a great amount of value on the number of inbound links you have to your site, so this is an excellent way of building popularity with the search engines, as well as your human customers.

Both article marketing and distributing press releases will enable you to establish yourself as an expert and your company as a source for products or services. Each is effective, and often, submission to article directories is free – that’s right, free marketing for your business, all it takes is a little bit of time.

3. Start a Blog

It’s a common statement when it comes to Internet marketing: content is king. A blog – short for a weblog – allows you to create fresh content at regular intervals, driving traffic and search engines to your website.

Like article marketing and press release distribution, having a blog allows you to establish your expertise about the products and services that your small business offers. Unlike article marketing and press release distribution, however, a blog allows you to begin to carry on a dialog with your current and prospective customers.

Your blog works like search engine magic for your website. By linking your blog to your website, you draw the search engines to your website. Your site will rank higher and your customers will have a much easier time finding your site.

4. Commit to a Link Building Campaign and Submit Your Site to Directories and Search Engines

As a small business owner building and promoting your business on the web, having quality inbound links is important. Links allow your site to be found by those who visit similar sites looking for the products and services that your company offers.

Links – like those at the end of your articles and press releases, like those that link back to individual products or services from within your blog, and like those from others who have purchased from you in the past – help to improve your site’s search engine rank.

By submitting your business’ website to relevant directories and even to industry-specific – niche – search engines, you’ll begin to generate additional links. More importantly, however, these niche directories are increasingly used by those looking for very specific sites. Having your listing present will make it even more likely that your prospective customers will find your page; that makes them a particularly valuable marketing tool for your business, and, again, it’s often free to submit your site.

5. Look for Joint Ventures with Other Like-Minded Business People

It’s not uncommon for small businesses to work together – a movie theater and a restaurant offering coupons for a discount if you spend the evening at both places. In my past life working with large corporations I realized that the largest companies grow by means of joint ventures all the time. However, many small businesses do not look into joint ventures when it comes to marketing their businesses.

Is it always easy to find the right joint venture for marketing your business? No, of course not. But it is possible to find like-minded business owners whose customers could benefit from your products or services just as your customers could benefit from those that they offer.

As a result, both small businesses will be better able to extend their outreach and develop a wider customer base. If you are going to enter into a joint venture, search for companies with similar goals and a similar customer base but a different type of product or service. Stay on the lookout, keep an open mind and you just might find the perfect opportunity to market your business to a new audience.

A perfect example of this principle is a recent joint venture I did with a company who specializes in teaching business credit skills to small business owners. This company markets to the same clients that I wish to add to my customer list, but they offer a completely different service. By working together, we were able to market our services to each other’s mailing lists, resulting in both of us attracting new customers we would not have had otherwise. The great part about this joint venture was that there was no out-of-pocket cost to either of us – just our time and a little creativity in coming up with suitable promotions to each other’s lists!

Taking your business to the web does not need to be difficult, nor does it need to be expensive. By taking a creative approach, small business owners on a tight marketing budget will be able to find traffic and increase their customer base.

Focus on reaching the search engines: use the right keywords and use them appropriately. Let people know that you have the information they need with articles and be sure to get the word out by distributing press releases. Interact with your customers with a high quality blog, and focus on getting great links. Lastly, take advantage of partnerships with like-minded business owners.

Marketing your small business website may require a lot of hard work, but it doesn’t require a lot of money – oftentimes, the best results are derived from the most creative (not the most expensive) solutions.